This spring, the 2008–2009 class of McDermott Interns will present the second intern-curated exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art, titled Life in Space: Staging Identity. Life in Space features thirty-four works of art from the Museum’s collections, and includes paintings, photographs, and works on paper from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The pieces in this exhibition represent a rich variety of spaces, ranging from the imposing cityscape to the dusty road. In each work, the artist has provided visual cues—such as architecture, fashion, or interaction between figures—that reflect the values and ideas of the society to which the space belongs. Life in Space seeks to explore ways artists represent the complex and reciprocal relationship between environment and identity.

“We picked a theme that would help us investigate and understand the way the relationship between space and identity unfolds and Life in Space will show that,” said Kim McCarty, McDermott Curatorial Intern. “We were drawn to the attention to space and the idea of the viewer’s identity in Olafur Eliasson’s works and were able to relate this idea to certain works in the Museum’s collections.”

Highlights of the exhibition include several works from Ando Hiroshige’s woodblock print series, The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido ; photographs by Lynn Lennon and Geoff Winningham, along with several photographs by Bill Owens, among others; and prints from other prominent European and American artists.